299 Montgomery Road, Montgomery, IL

Year: 2014TOURERS: Bryan, LAURACOSTS: $23/$35 VIP﻿CHAINSAWS:6/5

2014 kind of started off slowly for us. Although we hit a number of professional haunts, nothing really stood out for us. Thus, it was with some trepidation that we made our visit to the Massacre Haunted House. We liked it last year, and this year they had promised to be bigger and better, but given our track record so far, we were a bit leery. Thankfully our intuition proved incorrect, as the Massacre was easily our most enjoyable professional haunt of the year so far, and it did live up to the promise of being bigger and better.

Last year, the Massacre was in Naperville, at the local Odyssey Fun World, but for 2014 they had moved to Montgomery, IL, in a large storefront area, giving them more room to expand the haunt, which they used to great effect. The haunt actually consisted of two attractions - the Massacre and Fear Factory 3D, connected together. Whereas last year Fear Factory marked the end of the haunt, this year it was in the middle, and there several more scenes following it. Overall, the entire haunt took about 22 minutes, but seemed to go on quite a bit longer.

There is so much to say about the Massacre that it's hard to know where to begin, so I suppose we can start with set design. In short, this place has huge variety and detail, Many of the standard horror scenes, such as a mental asylum, crypt, butcher shop, et al are covered, as well as some scenes we've not seen before in a haunt, such as a monkey research room and a theater (both the inside and the outside). All of the sets were very detailed as well.

To give some examples of the set design, there were several giant animatronic creatures, including a life side Tyrannosaurus head, a giant serpentine creature, and what looked like a giant man-eating plant. There was an entire mental hospital setup, a full-sized crypt, a large industrial boiler room, and and outside street scene featuring a tire shop. Some of them were similar in design and scale to Fear City in Morton Grove, but done here with even more variety. Perhaps our favorite scene (and it was definitely hard to choose) in terms of scale was the theater scene that visitors entered immediately after finishing the 3D portion of the haunt.

Commentary

MAP

This started off in an actual theater recreation, with dozens of seats and a real movie being projected onto the wall. It actually looked like this was some kind of wait entertainment rather than a set. And the set didn't end there. When visitors existed the theater, they found themselves in the lobby of the theater, which was filled with authentic horror movie posters and other items. Visitors then moved outside to a street scene, and if they looked back on the theater they could actually see the entire facade of the building, complete with ticket window and giant art deco neon marquee. And to top it off, sticking out of the side of the theater was the back half of a small airplane! The sets were simply something to marvel at, not only because of the detail, but because of the scale and the creativity. It kept us interested throughout the entire haunt, as we were always wondering what was around the corner.

In fact, the sets were so well done that some of them really didn't need actors in them. But there were actors - lots of them, and all of them were excellent. They stayed in character throughout, and had entertaining and varied routines that were not repetitive or excessively in your face. For instance, the first scene we entered was a mental hospital, with the corridor blocked by a gurney. Immediately upon entering, a female actor scurried from room to room behind the gurney, just enough so that we could see her out of the corner of our vision. This little motion added to the creepiness of the scene as we weren't quite sure what we saw or where the actor might pop out of next.

In the same scene there was a short little nurse with black eyes who, rather than trying to scare us, simply went about her routine of waking up the patients as if it was really her job. She had a chain that she banged on a corridor full of doors in order to get the patients to "take their medicine" - in response, all of the doors rattled, and of course actors popped out of some of them. While we've seen similar setups before, this was was beautifully designed and the actress playing the nurse was top notch, mixing some humor with the scares, which is always enjoyable. It really set the tone in our minds for how the rest of the haunt was going to go, and we were not disappointed.

One clever thing that seemed to be a part of most of the scenes in the Massacre was the pattern of mixing real actors with realistically dressed fake mannequins. These mannequins were all life size, often with masks on and dressed in such a way as the make it hard for people to tell if they are real or not. These provide an effective distraction for visitors while real actors sneak up on them. Another technique, often used in conjunction with the mannequins, was the use of a decoy live actor who had some type of speech to give, which distracted from a hidden live actor in another area of the room. These two techniques were repeated throughout the haunt, often to excellent effect. Even when we were expecting a hidden actor to pop out, we never quite knew where the actor would come from.

Again, we can't stress enough just how varied and interesting the Massacre was. We could easily see a number of the scenes in actual commercials for the haunt, unlike some haunts where commercials for the haunt bear little or no resemblance to the haunt itself. We could go on and on just listing all of the great things, but we really should just stop and let you see for yourself. Many haunts don't live up to the hype, especially when they are professional. However, we're happy to say that the Massacre does, and also that its claim of being "bigger and better" than last year is also true. Our advice = go early and beat the lines because they will be long, and deservedly so. Enjoy!